Seduced by a Scoundrel - By Barbara Dawson Smith Page 0,16
only his charcoal sleeve with its glinting silver buttons. She couldn’t wrench her gaze from the legal document. Quite possibly, her mother’s death warrant.
“You aren’t about to swoon, are you?”
“Swoon?”
“You’re deathly pale. Don’t you have any chairs in this godforsaken place?”
“Sold.” She didn’t bother to mention the few furnishings in the drawing room.
What would happen to Mama?
“You’ll sit on the damned stairs, then. Come.”
He caught her slender wrist, his long fingers entrapping her chilly flesh with a band of heated steel. He gave a tug and her legs moved obediently, her skirt whispering like the frantic pulse beat in her ears.
Somehow Drake Wilder had coerced her brother into signing over the house. Why hadn’t Gerald told her?
She couldn’t think why; she knew only that Drake Wilder had breached the last of her defenses, conquered the final outpost of her independence. They would be turned out into the street.
Unless she bound herself in marriage to this gambler.
Black dots swarmed before her eyes. In a stupor, she stumbled on the threshold of the doorway. The deed slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the checkered marble floor of the foyer. With a choked cry, she stooped down to retrieve it.
Wilder reacted more swiftly. He snatched up the document and handed it back to her. Their fingers brushed with a bolt of lightning.
Half crouched, Alicia stiffened. So did he. Their gazes locked. A frown quirked his black brows, and those uncommon blue eyes raked her features. If she didn’t know better, she might believe him concerned for her well-being.
But he cared nothing for her. If it suited his ruthless purpose—and she knew it did—Drake Wilder would toss her and her family into the gutter. Who was he to destroy their lives?
Unexpectedly, he cupped her cheek in his big, warm palm. “Your skin is like ice. I’ll help you up.”
His sham compassion shattered the glass wall around her emotions. A storm whipped to life inside her, washing hot color into her cheeks, filling her emptiness with blinding rage.
Springing up, she shoved him away. “Villain!”
He staggered backward and caught his balance with the flat of one palm on the floor. With quick canine grace, he vaulted to his feet. His eyes glittered in the sunlight from the long window. “Virago,” he said in a level tone. “Don’t think you can get the best of me.”
“And don’t you ever touch me again.” She crumpled the deed and hurled it at him.
He caught the wad of paper with an easy flick of his wrist. “A husband has the right to touch his wife.”
“You aren’t my husband.”
“But I will be. As soon as arrangements can be made.”
Goaded by his confidence, she yanked the tatters of composure around her. He would not cause her to lose control again. He would not. She lifted her chin. “We still have the entailed estate. You can never take it from us.”
“That house lies in ruins. It’s uninhabitable.”
His knowledge rattled her. Two years earlier, a fire had destroyed their manor house in Northumberland. They could never survive the icy moorland winter by camping in the burned-out shell. “I’ll find another man to wed, then. A gentleman.”
“With madness in your family? I think not.” A strange watchfulness on his flinty features, he smoothed out the deed and tucked it into an inner pocket of his coat. “The nobility place great value on pure bloodlines. Not even the Marquess of Hailstock can tolerate such a taint.”
His perception struck Alicia like a blow. How did Wilder know so much? How did he guess that Richard had refused to marry her unless she committed Mama to that hideous asylum?
Then Alicia understood the ugly answer. “You’ve been spying on me.”
“It pays to know one’s opponent.”
Outrage soured her tongue. Defeat tasted even more bitter. Wilder had maneuvered her into a corner, stolen her home, outflanked her at every step. “Why me?” she asked. “There are plenty of impoverished noblewomen who would marry you for your money. Ladies from families more accepted in society than mine.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps so. However, it seems that fate, in the form of your brother, has intervened. You will do well enough for my purposes.”
His purposes. If she must give in to him, at least she could make some demands of her own. “I’ll consider your proposal, then,” she said frigidly, “on two conditions. First, you shall sign a legal document granting me sole guardianship of my mother. Wherever I live, so will she. I’ll never let you lock her away in a rathole where